Link to delete your Google+ account | Hacker News Reader

Link to delete your Google+ account

plus.google.com

47 pointsApacheEcho14 comments

Careful. People that did this are certainly better informed than I am, but here's a way to break Google's services and annoy the hell out of you.

- I was a G+ user, registered with my 'real name'™

- The nymwars discussion came up, real name policies were enforced. I have strong sympathies for one faction, changed my name to 'Ben .'

- Profile suspended

- Deleted my account and deleted my Google Profile (or whatever that precursor thing was called)

If you somehow end up doing what I did, you

- will regularly end up on 'Your profile is suspended' sites. Reloading Gmail (I'm glad that I'm using it less and less) gives me a login screen, logging in shows the 'profile is suspended' bullshit. Only way out? Manually going to mail.google.com. Why a reload on a GMail site would lead to a G+ login/redirect .. I don't know.

- will be out forever. Luckily, I consider G+ as MySpace, just worse. But I DID click on the 'Your profile is suspended, please click here' link in the past. It .. leads to the very same site. In other words: You're now enjoying a suspended profile, that shows up a lot and annoys the hell out of it. You cannot make it go away, you cannot follow any links that this site offers and Google shoves it in your face again and again.

I seriously doubt that any testing was done that includes 'Your name is not agreeable' suspensions. Ever.

Of course: The link of this story here leads to a site that says:

"Your profile is currently suspended Until your profile is unsuspended, you will be unable to use this feature.

Visit your profile to learn more."

Where 'Visit your profile to learn more.' is a link that .. shows that very same thing. Suspended people cannot delete their profile. Makes sense..

Link to delete your Google account entirely https://www.google.com/accounts/DeleteAccount

"Your circles will be deleted, but people in your circles will remain in your Contacts."

I hate this. I once had the HN circle added (was being circulated after plus' debut). After deleting my plus account, they never left my contacts list. Syncing across to my Android meant I also had my huge contacts list on the phone. I remember trying to delete these contacts but it didn't quite work and I don't know why.

Interesting and I can see how that would be annoying. I would point out though that it seems to me that google circles will soon or at least someday be either the main way or the only way to express an access control list on another google product. For example, when you want to share a doc on google docs, or a picture on picasa, or what-have-you. In as much as your google account is an identity thing, and google circles are groups of identities, this ACL-checking function of google products isn't going away.

Personally I think the integration is a good thing, for example now that youtube is integrated with google circles, when I comment on a video on youtube I can hide that comment from the public and only show it to my friends or family or colleagues. I assume that some day I'll be able to mail a circle from gmail and stuff like that.

I regret putting myself on one of those circles. :(

Given the scope and variety of dependencies people have on Google products, I feel as though this should also very clearly state what this does not delete. E.G. "this does NOT delete your Gmail account"

I've lost count of how many times I've deleted my + accounts across 2 different e-mail addresses.

Broken feature is broken.

Where's the link to delete my hacker news account?

You can't. You can change the info in your account so it doesn't relate to you... That's the best you've got.

You can't delete old comments and submissions

The "we can't let you delete your account, otherwise our entire system breaks down" thing is something I simply can't understand as an argument, especially on YCombinator's HackerNews.

I already asked for deletion of all my comments/submission and the account, but never got a response. I'd not be ok with having my account "disabled" like on Facebook. This is not a police database or a highly critical system where deleting records is illegal, dangerous or anything. People just submit links and talk about it, that's all and we all try to be friendly to each other here as good as possible (not always though).

I believe that letting people go and opt-out, or delete their account is not a luxury or an option, but a human right and part of a good customer service too.

So if accounts could be disabled and took comments and submissions along with them, that could make a mess of a lot of really great discussions.

My approach to HN (and also by using my real name) is that I don't really need the bulk of my participation removed at any point. If I decide to leave the community, I'm fine with the information in my profile.

This view would be far different if pg were making money off of the content and participation though. Until he is, I don't see the issue with the way things are.

Even if you could they are probably archived in so many other places that it would be fairly pointless to do so. Never post something on the Internet that you might later want to delete or completely disconnect yourself from.

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